Biblical Historiography

(3,677 words)

The historian E. Meyer remarked that “an independent historical literature in the true sense only appeared with the Israelites and the Greeks”. It is generally agreed that history, as understood in our culture, originated at two points very distant in space and time, in 5th-century Greece with Herodotus and Thucydides, and, five centuries or more earlier, with the first redactor of Genesis whose work can be identified, the anonymous author called the “Yahwist” and the other author who recounted …